Thank you to Nghi Vo and Netgalley for the eARC of this book.

While I enjoyed Don't Sleep with the Dead, I do not believe this should have been advertised as a stand alone. The world building was rich and the characters and settings were interesting and well-written, but I often felt throughout the book, as if I was on the cusp of understanding, or found myself having questions that would have been answered had I read The Chosen and the Beautiful. While enjoyable on its own, I think it would have been a richer experience had I read The Chosen and the Beautiful first.

Nghi Vo has a gift for writing setting that has a richness and an agency of its own, turning it almost into a character in its own right. Her mastery of magical realism really shines in this book as she integrates people made of living paper and locations that have rules one must follow in order to be admitted into the grit, bigotry, and the stresses of life faced by people living and dying in New York and Paris on the cusp of World War II.